Is Porn Mainstream?

“Not long ago, consumers of ‘smut,’ as it was derisively called, were considered to be, well, amoral sleazebags. The word ‘porno’ elicited seedy images of ‘peep shows’ and dilapidated video stores in beastly parts of town, where chain-smoking, raincoat-wearing deviants congregated behind papered-up windows amid the stench of vicarious stimulation. Today, right or wrong, ‘adult entertainment’ has lost most of this depraved veneer. Somehow the explicit has shed the illicit; the marginal has assumed the centre. The fornicating freaks are welcome on Main St. Call it ‘carnal chic.’ Or ‘gutter glam.’ Or, maybe, ‘pop porn’.”